TV commercials for virility or antidepressant medications often devote most of their two-minute spiels to describing the awful incidental maladies that may befall the pill-taker. By the end of the Doomsday small print, youre likely to think: That which makes me stronger may also kill me. A similar warning should attend any review of Side Effects.Revealing the usual amount of plot would be unfair to viewers with a right to be as surprised as most critics have been. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Scott Z. Burns, who previously collaborated on the twisty thrillers Contagion and The Informant!,the new movieis like a secret too cool to keep but too treacherous to share. Side Effectsvirtually demands a three-word review: Just see it. Soderbergh has said that this is the last movie he will direct for a while. (Hes got a TV film, the Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, set for airing on HBO later this year.) The industrys most prodigious auteur may be entitled to a rest. Now in his 25th year since his 1989 debut withsex, lies and videotape, Soderbergh has directed 25 features, including eight in the last five years. Hes also an active producer, shepherding such films … Continue reading →

Steven Soderbergh has money issues. From the bank robbers of Out of Sight to the drug dealers of Traffic to the sex workers of The Girlfriend Experience and Magic Mike, the costs vs. benefits of American success has always been at the core of the 50-year-old directors work. He scored his two biggest hits, in 2000 and 2001, by reinvigorating classic Hollywood tropes about money: Erin Brockovich, in the strident anticorporate vein of Silkwood, starred Julia Roberts as an environmental crusader in a push-up bra and netted $250 million. Oceans Eleven did even better, launching a $1.1billion trilogy. The candy-colored remake of a 1960 Sinatra film rediscovered a lost formula: the heist flick with a cavalcade of stars. There hasnt been a film as successful in either genre since. Soderberghs newest, Side Effects, opening on Feb.7, stars Channing Tatum as Martin, a hotshot Wall Street trader whos just done time for insider trading. Rooney Mara plays his wife, Emily, a depressive whose condition escalates after his return. As Martin scrambles to launch a scheme with a financial whiz he met in prison, Emily is prescribed a mood-inhibiting antidepressant that seems to produce terrible Side Effectscrying jags, sleepwalking, suicidal thoughts, and … Continue reading →

Posted: Feb. 8, 2013 | 2:12 a.m. Possible side effects of watching "Side Effects" include increased brain activity, confusion, occasional irritability and warm, fuzzy feelings about Jude Law. "Side Effects" is not intended for use by children or people suffering from short attention spans. If you experience an erection lasting longer than four hours, keep it to yourself, weirdo. Interestingly, for a movie based on the hidden dangers of pharmaceuticals, it turns out the less you know about "Side Effects" - director Steven Soderbergh's big-screen swan song - the better. Emily Taylor (a haunted-looking Rooney Mara) had every luxury money could buy - until her husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), went to prison for insider trading and her perfect world was pulled out from under her. After four years of hardship, his release should have put a little color in her cheeks. Instead, she slips back into the sort of overwhelming hopelessness that first accompanied his arrest. Following a botched attempt to harm herself, Emily comes under the care of Jonathan Banks (Law), a sympathetic psychiatrist who begins treating her with antidepressants that make her nauseous and kill her sex drive. But when a friend recommends the new drug Ablixa, which … Continue reading →

The quietly bloody opening of Steven Soderberghs psychiatric-meds melodrama Side Effects leaves a horror-movie chill. Then the picture unfolds so upsettingly that the last thing I expected was to be laughing my head off by the end. The title refers specifically to the malign side effects of prescription antidepressants. A psychiatrist (Jude Law) takes on a suicidal patient (Rooney Mara), whose husband (Channing Tatum) has just finished a four-year sentence for insider trading. The shrink puts her on a fictional pill called Ablixa. The critique of Big Pharma is implicit throughout: Hes also being paid $50,000 to enlist guinea pigs for yet another new drug. We see one patient jump at the chance -- never mind the risks -- as soon as she finds out its free. The terrific cast includes Vinessa Shaw as Laws wife, Ann Dowd as Tatums mother and Catherine Zeta-Jones with her hair yanked back in a bun and a bearing hard enough to break teeth. Thomas Newmans initially delicate score draws you in without directing your feelings at every minute. The demonically clever script, by Scott Z. Burns, dances dangerously close to the edge of oh-come-on -- and in retrospect there are a couple of … Continue reading →